Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

JNews, a new UK-based organization, is an independent source of analysis, opinion, information and news, striving to offer"Alternative Jewish perspective on Israel-Palestine".

According its website:

JNews provides the British media and the public at large with up-to-date, accurate news, as well as features, commentary and analysis by leading experts, some of which is specially commissioned by JNews.

JNews draws its material from a wide variety of sources and lays special emphasis on Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental outlets/agencies.

JNews offers a unique database of prominent experts from the UK, Israel and Palestine who can participate in media and public discussion.

A new report and billboard campaign launched by Israeli group Im Tirtzu – the Second Zionist Revolution" accuses at least twelve Israeli human rights groups of support for or involvement in the indictment of Israeli officials for serious violations of international law in courts overseas, under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' (see below).

Launched to coincide with Israeli Remembrance Day on 19 April, and Independence Day on 20 April, the campaign also accuses two grant-making bodies, the New Israel Fund (NIF) and the Ford Foundation, of complicity in these activities.

The report, of which 34 pages have been made available to JNews, was published Friday by reporter Ben Caspit of the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. (Both report and article are in Hebrew.)

Caspit covered the report largely sympathetically, although he objected to the blatant connection to Remembrance Day. According to his article:"Im Tirtzu are keeping the grand finale of the campaign for Remembrance Day. It will feature a hard-hitting billboard: against the background of a wreath placed on the tomb of a fallen IDFsoldier from operation 'Cast Lead', with a burning torch in the background, the following text will appear: 'We salute, They persecute! New Israel Fund and Adalah: Subversives, we've had enough of you.'"

The chairperson of Im Tirtzu, Ronen Shoval, is quoted in the article as saying: "This research and its results made us feel sick. Every Hebrew mother should know that while her son stands guard, somewhere there is a lawyer connected to the NIF sitting and thinking how to turn him into a war criminal."

The latter is a play on a famous quote by David Ben-Gurion, who said that every Hebrew (Jewish) mother should know that her son is in good hands in the army.

Caspit says that the NIF employs a "systematic pattern of action" and that it "establishes and sponsors dozens of radical anti-Zionist organizations." He adds that the Im Tirtzu campaign aims to expose the "antithesis" to Remembrance Day: "Israelis who ask international courts to conduct 'targeted assassinations' against Israeli officers."

The report

The report points to Gaza-based rights group the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) as the prime mover in legal action against Israeli officials overseas in recent years. It then attempts to describe links between that organization and Israeli human rights groups, the NIFand the Ford Foundation.

The report mentions a plethora of Israeli organizations, including Gisha, Bimkom, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, HaMoked, B'Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), Yesh Din, MachsomWatch, Social TV, Zochrot, Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), Adalah and Rabbis for Human Rights, but the accusations directed at them are rather broad.

Most of these organizations are castigated for maintaining ongoing relations with PCHR and other Palestinian organizations, exchanging human rights information with them and issuing joint statements against human rights violations. Social TV is also castigated for having organized public debates about the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The report also criticizes Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard (Yesh Din) and Ishai Menuhin (PCATI) for saying that if Israeli officials are not brought to justice in Israel, they should face charges abroad, while the feminist peace group Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), is attacked for having issued a statement supporting indictment abroad of Israeli officials for crimes committed during the Gaza offensive (2009).

Menuhin is described as having promoted a war crimes case while he was a spokesperson for Israeli antimilitarist group Yesh Gvul, while human rights group Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel - is targeted for having provided a legal opinion for one of the legal cases overseas.

The report also examines in detail the history and connections of Jamil Dakwar, a lawyer whose studies were previously funded by the NIF, and is now active in submitting war crimes cases against Israeli policymakers.

Financial relations between these organizations and the NIF, and between the Ford Foundation and the NIF, are also explored in detail.

The latest in a series of attacks on dissent

The report is the second in a series of reports by "Im Tirtzu." An earlier report, covered by the same reporter in January, accused 16 Israeli organizations and the NIF of providing the UNteam headed by Judge Richard Goldstone with much of the evidence it needed in order to describe Israeli human rights violations committed during Israel's offensive on Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009.

The publication of the first report by this group was followed by a vitriolic public campaignagainst the NIF and the organizations it supports, played out in all major Israeli media outlets, as well as in a billboard campaignthat focused personally on NIF chairperson, former MKProfessor Naomi Chazan.

The declared aim of the report and campaign was to expose the activities of Israeli human rights groups that criticize Israel in a manner that delegitimizes the country.

The first report cited an address to the Knesset by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who defined "the Goldstone threat" as "a codeword for an attempt to delegitimize Israel's right to self defense" and as a strategic threat to the state of Israel.

An Israeli think-tank, the Reut Institute, and other analysts have defined what they see as the limits of legitimate discourse using similar terms.

In February, a proposed lawwas tabled in the Knesset, which, if passed, would require a host of Israeli civil society organizations to re-register as "political entities," revoke their tax-exempt status and require them to declare any official foreign funding in all public appearances. The law passed a preliminary hearing with 58 MKs voting for and 11 against.

More recently, 23-year-old Israeli whistleblower Anat Kamm, who leaked classified documents on illegal military assassinations to Israeli journalist Uri Blau of Haaretz, has been indicted, amid explosive public debate – and after a prolonged gag order – for "serious espionage with intention of causing grave damage to state security."

Some Israeli analysts surmise that the severity of the charges against Kamm stems from the fact that her evidence could serve as a basis for arrest warrants against senior military commanders overseas.

Shock in the human rights community in Israel

Israeli human rights organizations have expressed shock at what they call the latest stage in a campaign against dissent in Israel.

Director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Hadas Ziv, pointed out that at no stage does the report attempt to refute or deny the factual allegations made in the war crimes cases overseas. "I would have been happy to see them try to refute the information, but this they cannot do," she said. "Instead, they prefer to shoot the messenger, and while doing so they undermine our struggle for democratic values and human rights."

Ziv added, "They think mothers are worried their sons will be prosecuted for war crimes, I say mothers are afraid their sons will be killed, or become war criminals. What better way to avoid this than respecting international law and striving for peace?"

Adalah has called the billboard campaign, slated to be posted in all major towns in Israel, "incitement." The group's director, Hassan Jabareen, added that "the campaign waged today against human rights organizations in Israel started after systematic attacks on the Supreme Court, and comes in parallel to attacks against journalists and freedom of the press. This political climate strengthens what Hannah Arendt said of the rise of totalitarianism: it starts when politics wishes to work outside of law and dissenting opinion."

Eilat Ma'oz, Director of CWP, said: "The Im Tirzu report is a hysterical response to a rising tide of international demands for accountability." She added that CWP's appeal for protection of universal jurisdiction had been supported by 98 prominent feminist organizations worldwide, and added that "the silencing of dissident voices inside Israel merely highlights the need for international intervention to achieve justice."

Universal Jurisdiction

In recent years, human rights groups have examined the possibility of using the principle of universal jurisdiction in order to hold senior Israeli military and political figures to account for serious violations of human rights.

According to Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, these attempts were made after years of legal action within the Israeli courts, which failed to bring about significant improvement in Israeli human rights practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and resulted in an atmosphere of impunity among Israel's security forces.

Israeli governments have responded by exerting political pressure on several countries, includingSpainand the UK, to limit or change their laws regarding universal jurisdiction, in order to prevent arrests of Israelis in those countries.

This week, the Spanish Supreme Court shelveda probe of seven senior Israeli military commanders and policymakers regarding an air strike that killedHamas militant Salah Shehadeh together with 14 civilians in 2002. The probe was begun in 2009, after which Spain passed a bill to narrow the scope of its law on universal jurisdiction.

In the UK, an arrest warrant against former Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni led to Israeli pressureto change UK laws. The decision was ultimately postponed.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

The following item, reporting on the upcoming Chicago Hearing and elaborating on one of its major topics: US aid to Israel, was compiled cooperatively with The Only Democracy? editor, Jesse Bacon, and posted earlier today (April 15) on the The Only Democracy? website. The version on the site (at the address listed immediately below) provides direct links to most of the sources cited as well as a link (at the end) to a shorter version of Shlomo Swirsky's 2008 followup to his 2004 report, "The Cost of Occupation." The followup report is titled, "The Burden of Occupation."

The US Congress has shamefully abdicated its oversight role in US foreign policy and has become an apologist for the worst policies of the Israeli Government, all the while sending Israel billions of dollars in aid. Fortunately activists are not waiting for the US Congress to act. They are staging their own investigation, a first of its kind event.

The Chicago Hearing is modeled after a Congressional hearing and will be webcast live from a link on the home page. The Chicago Hearing will bring together witnesses to tell seldom-heard stories from Israel-Palestine that raise critical questions about the effects of U.S. policies in the region. Does Israel's explanation of security legitimize its violations of international law? Does the U.S. government condone Israeli policies and practices that would not be tolerated if replicated in America by the U.S. government?

The Hearing highlights voices of those on the other end of the pipeline of U.S. aid to Israel. Israeli, Palestinian and American witnesses will testify to lives lost, freedoms denied and property destroyed by Israeli policies buttressed by U.S. aid and support. The witnesses will testify to the collateral effects of U.S. policies toward Israel: military and financial aid that totaled over $3 billion in 2009 as well as unconditional diplomatic support for Israel in the United Nations".

Yotam Amit, one of the organizers, asked New Profile, a feminist, anti-militarist movement in Israel, to provide background information about the link between US aid and undemocratic aspects of Israeli society. The following piece is based on an ensuing exchange of emails between Amit, Rela Mazali, a founding and active New Profile member (and frequent contributor to The Only Democracy?) and co-editor Jesse Bacon, incorporating excerpts from a seminal study by Israeli sociologist Shlomo Swirsky, "The Burden of Occupation."

For years now, groups such as the US Campaign to End the Occupation have been trying to show how US aid reduces US social spending, New Profile works in Israel to make a somewhat analogous argument. While the $3 Billion in official US Aid is vastly more then we give any other country, the impact on Israeli's spending is obviously much greater.

Based on various studies and, in particular, Shlomo Swirsky's "The Cost of Occupation," we suggest that the direct effect is not the repeated slashes in Israeli social spending, but rather a camouflaging of the fact that these slashes are the neoliberal policy of choice benefiting the economic and security elite, under the guise of necessary "security spending." According to Swirsky,

"It can be said that the American administration allowed Israel to conduct its military operations against the Palestinian Authority under highly favorable domestic political conditions. The government was not forced to strain the local capital market or to raise taxes, steps that would have distressed Israel's more affluent stratum. This is the very stratum that, if faced with the threat of carrying a heavier financial burden, might have been able to press the government to consider changing its policy regarding the occupied Palestinian territories. As early as the first Intifada, the business community was reportedly 'fed up with the devaluation of the benefits it derived from the occupation and with the increasing burden the occupation imposed on it'(Levy, 2003: 172). Notably, this is the same stratum whose children had evinced a 'motivational crisis' regarding their service in the I.D.F. during the first Intifada (see Chapter 6)." Swirsky, 2008, p.119So Israeli's elites are not being inconvenienced by the Occupation. How can we change that?

"The 2003 request for loan guarantees was not the first time Israel had turned to the U.S. for this type of assistance. About a decade earlier, in 1992, during the Rabin administration, Israel asked for American guarantees to fund the absorption of thousands of new immigrants from CIS countries. Then, the American government stipulated that it would grant the request only if Israel froze its settlement activity in the Palestinian territories. In contrast, the guarantees requested in 2003 were not used to promote Israel's society or economy; they were utilized to fund continuation of the occupation, and they enabled the Israeli government to exempt affluent citizens from picking up the tab." Swirsky, 2008, p. 119.

The 1992 Loan Guarantees are infamous as a source of tension between the US and Israel, with then-president George Bush the Elder threatening to cut them off. Obviously no such threat was made in 2003.

"Until the second Intifada … no Israeli government had taken such extreme measures as the Sharon governments, and under normal conditions, it is highly unlikely that any government would have considered recommending such measures, wrapped as packages to be delivered in a flurry to the Knesset for hasty approval. It is hard to imagine such far-reaching steps being taken without the prevailing atmosphere of the Intifada, particularly following the suicide bombings on buses and in restaurants and banquet halls. The combination of 'military emergency' and 'danger of fiscal and financial collapse' set the stage for the administration to take these drastic steps. … 'even if we consider this military policy as a given, there were still other routes the government could have taken, such as increasing the capital gains tax; raising income tax for the upper income brackets – or at least not reducing it; imposing a war loan; cutting the salaries of senior government officials,local government officials, and high-ranking military officers; cutting the 'fat' in the military budget; or reducing government benefits to well-to-do sectors of the population, among them residents of the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. The option chosen was to make cuts whose main effect was to lower the standard of living of Israel's middle and lower classes." Swirsky, 2008, p.122

Indeed, a June 2003 article by Akiva Eldar suggested that the US directly interfered with Israeli elections through its loan guarantees supporting the incumbent government which went on to a big victory.

"Less then three months ago the Israeli government fell apart over a dispute between Likud and Labor over how the budget pie should be divided on both sides of the Green Line.

(Past Labor Party Prime Minister) Shimon Peres said last week during a campaign speech in Ramat Gan that Israel spent no less than $60 billion on the settlements, which he called 'fanning the flames of the conflict' – the equivalent of 20 years American aid. Amram Miztna (Labor Party candidate) is trying to persuade the voters that the key to their physical and economic security is to be found in disengagement from the territories and the return of most of the settlers to the state of Israel.

And now, less than three weeks before the decision is made on Election Day, the U.S. is telling the Israeli voter that the Likud can preserve security, deepen the occupation and get funding from Uncle Sam.

Before the first word has been spoken in the discussions scheduled for today in Washington about the special aid and loan guarantees, the Israeli public is getting the message that the leader of the free world is pleased with the policies of the Sharon-Eitam (Likud Party) government."

To conclude, the 'security threat' actively perpetuated by successive Israeli governments–through their choices of continued occupation and repeated warfare–has provided an effective smoke screen allowing the extremely swift implementation of radically neoliberal economic policies. Recurring severe slashes in social budgets result from these policies rather than the needs of 'national security'. But the official, as well as media, focus on national fear and 'national security' has successfully stemmed social unrest and potential protest. Meanwhile, these budget cuts actually feed directly into tax breaks for the highest salaried employees and richest property owners in the market. And the oversize, well heeled 'security' apparatus stoking conflict while deflecting social resistance is bolstered annually both by a disproportionate slice of Israel's own budget and by billions in US aid. These same billions also directly benefit a related interest group within theUS, because 75 percent of the funds are earmarked for purchases from US industry. Consequently, it's no wonder that the aid agreement between the U.S. and Israel has for some years now been changing the ratio of military to civilian aid, increasing the former while incrementally canceling the latter. As journalist Moti Bassok wrote in 2007,"Each year throughout the present agreement civilian aid was reduced by $120 million, while military aid grew $60 million. As of next year, annual U.S. aid will [… be] all military," forming an integrated enabling component of Israel's continuing and destructive militarization. It would seem that the economic and political elites of both the US and Israel have vested interests in continuing Israel's militarization, occupation and choice of warfare. Personally, we believe that it's left to us as citizens of both these countries to make maintaining those policies too costly for both regimes.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Perhaps this will come as a rude surprise to some of you who are reading this: There is no such thing as an Israeli nationality. In other words: There are no Israelis in the Jewish State. People residing in Israel are classified as "Jews"/"Arabs"/etc. The reason is that Israel is seen as a state belonging to the Jewish people (whether they live in Israel or not), not to its citizens. That's the essence of what it means for it to be a Jewish state. Jonathan Cook tells more in the article below.

A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognized as "Israelis," a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country's self-declared status as a Jewish state.

Israel refused to recognize an Israeli nationality at the country's establishment in 1948, making an unusual distinction between "citizenship" and "nationality." Although all Israelis qualify as "citizens of Israel," the state is defined as belonging to the "Jewish nation," meaning not only the 5.6 million Israeli Jews but also more than seven million Jews in the diaspora.

Critics say the special status of Jewish nationality has been a way to undermine the citizenship rights of non-Jews in Israel, especially the fifth of the population who are Arab. Some 30 laws in Israel specifically privilege Jews, including in the areas of immigration rights, naturalization, access to land and employment.

Arab leaders have also long complained that indications of "Arab" nationality on ID cards make it easy for police and government officials to target Arab citizens for harsher treatment.

The interior ministry has adopted more than 130 possible nationalities for Israeli citizens, most of them defined in religious or ethnic terms, with "Jewish" and "Arab" being the main categories.

The group's legal case is being heard by the high court after a district judge rejected their petition two years ago, backing the state's position that there is no Israeli nation.

The head of the campaign for Israeli nationality, Uzi Ornan, a retired linguistics professor, said: "It is absurd that Israel, which recognizes dozens of different nationalities, refuses to recognize the one nationality it is supposed to represent."

The government opposes the case, claiming that the campaign's real goal is to "undermine the state's infrastructure" -- a presumed reference to laws and official institutions that ensure Jewish citizens enjoy a privileged status in Israel.

Ornan, 86, said that denying a common Israeli nationality was the linchpin of state-sanctioned discrimination against the Arab population.

"There are even two laws -- the Law of Return for Jews and the Citizenship Law for Arabs -- that determine how you belong to the state," he said. "What kind of democracy divides its citizens into two kinds?"

Yoel Harshefi, a lawyer supporting Ornan, said the interior ministry had resorted to creating national groups with no legal recognition outside Israel, such as "Arab" or "unknown," to avoid recognizing an Israeli nationality.

In official documents most Israelis are classified as "Jewish" or "Arab," but immigrants whose status as Jews is questioned by the Israeli rabbinate, including more than 300,000 arrivals from the former Soviet Union, are typically registered according to their country of origin.

"Imagine the uproar in Jewish communities in the United States, Britain or France, if the authorities there tried to classify their citizens as 'Jewish' or 'Christian,'" said Ornan.

The professor, who lives close to Haifa, launched his legal action after the interior ministry refused to change his nationality to "Israeli" in 2000. An online petition declaring "I am an Israeli" has attracted several thousand signatures.

Ornan has been joined in his action by 20 other public figures, including former government minister Shulamit Aloni. Several members have been registered with unusual nationalities such as "Russian," "Buddhist," "Georgian" and "Burmese."

Two Arabs are party to the case, including Adel Kadaan, who courted controversy in the 1990s by waging a lengthy legal action to be allowed to live in one of several hundred communities in Israel open only to Jews.

Uri Avnery, a peace activist and former member of the parliament, said the current nationality system gave Jews living abroad a far greater stake in Israel than its 1.3 million Arab citizens.

"The State of Israel cannot recognize an 'Israeli' nation because it is the state of the 'Jewish' nation ... it belongs to the Jews of Brooklyn, Budapest and Buenos Aires, even though these consider themselves as belonging to the American, Hungarian or Argentine nations."

International Zionist organizations representing the diaspora, such as the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency, are given in Israeli law a special, quasi-governmental role, especially in relation to immigration and control over large areas of Israeli territory for the settlement of Jews only.

Ornan said the lack of a common nationality violated Israel's Declaration of Independence, which says the state will "uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race or sex."

Indications of nationality on ID cards carried by Israelis made it easy for officials to discriminate against Arab citizens, he added.

The government has countered that the nationality section on ID cards was phased out from 2000 -- after the interior ministry, which was run by a religious party at the time, objected to a court order requiring it to identify non-Orthodox Jews as "Jewish" on the cards.

However, Ornan said any official could instantly tell if he was looking at the card of a Jew or Arab because the date of birth on the IDs of Jews was given according to the Hebrew calendar. In addition, the ID of an Arab, unlike a Jew, included the grandfather's name.

"Flash your ID card and whatever government clerk is sitting across from you immediately knows which 'clan' you belong to, and can refer you to those best suited to 'handle your kind,'" Ornan said.

The distinction between Jewish and Arab nationalities is also shown on interior ministry records used to make important decisions about personal status issues such as marriage, divorce and death, which are dealt with on entirely sectarian terms.

Only Israelis from the same religious group, for example, are allowed to marry inside Israel -- otherwise they are forced to wed abroad -- and cemeteries are separated according to religious belonging.

Some of those who have joined the campaign complain that it has damaged their business interests. One Druze member, Carmel Wahaba, said he had lost the chance to establish an import-export company in France because officials there refused to accept documents stating his nationality as "Druze" rather than "Israeli."

The group also said it hoped to expose a verbal sleight of hand that intentionally mistranslates the Hebrew term "Israeli citizenship" on the country's passports as "Israeli nationality" in English to avoid problems with foreign border officials.

B Michael, a commentator for Yedioth Aharonoth, Israel's most popular newspaper, has observed: "We are all Israeli nationals -- but only abroad."

The campaign, however, is likely to face an uphill struggle in the courts.

A similar legal suit brought by a Tel Aviv psychologist, George Tamrin, failed in 1970. Shimon Agranat, head of the high court at the time, ruled: "There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people. ... The Jewish people is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of diaspora Jewries."

That view was echoed by the district court in 2008 when it heard Ornan's case.

The judges in the high court, which held the first appeal hearing last month, indicated that they too were likely to be unsympathetic. Justice Uzi Fogelman said: "The question is whether or not the court is the right place to solve this problem."

Friday, April 9, 2010

This story has a number of components:1- An Israeli woman, Anat Kamm, has been under a SECRET house arrest, accompanied by a gag order to the Israeli media, since December 2009. Here is the NYTimes coverage: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/01/us/AP-US-Israel-Military-Whistleblower.html?_r=2&sq=anat%20kam&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print2- The story that she's allegedly leaked to Ha'aretz correspondent Uri Blau in 2008, implicating top military staff, including Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi, in defying Supreme court (2006) ruling restricting targeted assassinations. The Ha'aretz story, in Hebrew, can be found at http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=10415513- The story of Israel's obedient media, and the Internet role in bringing it to the light. To read one version of how things went, see Gila Svirsky's article below.In reality, the internet response was more complicated. We at JPN considered running a story published by Richard Silverstein on his blog (Tikkun Olam)a few months back, but - like many other news services - decided to avoid doing so because we were told that Anat Kamm and her lawyer asked to keep the story under raps, hoping it'll help her negotiate a deal with the Shin Bet (Israel's secret service).4- The story exploded on the scene in the last few days, and as of today, the gag order was lifted (see below).=======================================

It's the next day, and it's probably fair to say that in the meantime all hell broke loose.Here are a number of additional links, most of them provided by Rela Mazali.

"When you're warned 'they know much more than you think,' and are told that your telephone line, e-mail and computer have been monitored for a long time and still are, then someone up there doesn't really understand what democracy is all about, and the importance of freedom of the press in preserving it."

"The label "highly classified" does not automatically turn a document into a security concern, the leaking of which constitutes espionage or treason. In most cases, the designation is intended simply to ensure that the file's contents do not reach the public's view. … To manage an occupation, a nation must raise obedient soldiers and officers [and, my addition: the obedient public that keeps on producing these soldiers and officers, Rela] - the kind who sit quietly while ideas are floated on how to circumvent the rulings of the supposedly leftist High Court, how to keep prying journalists at bay and how to deceive the meddlesome state comptroller."

"The stringent statutes [being applied to this case, Rela] are essentially carbon copies of criminal laws enacted during the pre-state British Mandate in 1936. While the current laws were adopted for Israeli jurisprudence, this was done with minimal alterations. The current statute does not explicitly recognize the defense claim - that revealing classified information is permitted in cases where the data is of vital public interest. … Passing classified information to a media entity is considered "espionage," despite the fact that this term is only applied to cases where information is passed on to an enemy."

"there isn't a single military correspondent who doesn't commit this crime of espionage on a daily basis. … We can assume that the senior member of the defense establishment who wanted to use Section 113 against me did not really think that I was a spy, but intended to scare me and to convince me that I had better not continue to publish criticism of the body that he headed. … [Uri Blau] is being singled out because the article he published in Haaretz, which is what first brought the entire affair to light, was critical and exposed improper behavior on the part of senior officials in the defense establishment."

1. It's not espionage. Anat Kamm has been accused of spying, no less. But Shabak Chief Yuval Diskin does not claim that the Uri Blau Haaretz articles damaged Israeli security. (He can't, can he? After all, it passed military censorship) So he can only refer to the "thousands of documents" that Kamm has confessed to stealing, and which she passed to Uri Blau (according to Diskin). And what is the argument? "Those documents are full of security and operational secrets that would endanger the lives of soldiers were they to fall into enemy hands." But they haven't fallen into enemy hands, so this is not espionage, nor is there intent. They were leaked to a journalist who has them in his possession (according to the Shabak). So whatever Kamm did, it was not espionage.

2. The Shabak's history of exaggerated accusations. Gurvitz points out that Diskin in his briefing said that the media should not compare Kamm to Tali Fahima. And why not? Because in several well-publicized cases, the Shabak and the media initially painted the accused as endangering the security of the state -- only to see that accusation wither away. Tali Fahima was accused of being an enemy agent, and planning terrorists attacks. When the trial began, the prosecution said (generously) that they would not seek the death penalty. Pretty good move, since she ended up getting a few years in jail. And let's not forget Sheikh Raad Saalah who was arrested in a big public way for contacting foreign agents, and ended up being convicted of some minor money crimes. In other words, the tactic scare the accused to death, then get a plea bargain. Gurvitz asks how credible is the charge that Blau has in his possession documents that will damage IDF soldiers, and he is refusing to return them? Itseems more likely that he has potentially damaging documents to the IDF brass.

3. Discrimination based on rank. Gurvitz points out that other IDF brass have removed documents from bases, and in one case, Elazar Stern, the head of the Education Corps leaked classified documents to Yair Lapid, a columnist. Some of these people were disciplined; Stern had to pay damages to the soldier whom he had ratted on; but nobody has been brought up on charges of espionage. Many other lower ranks of soldiers have "informed" against their superiors to human rights organizations, and their military careers have ended as a result (Gurvitz did that himself during the first intifada.) But none of these were considered more than minor offenses.

Representatives of the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet internal security service and the State Prosecutor's Office on Thursday asked Tel Aviv District Court for a partial removal of the gag order that has been in place for the last three-and-a-half months,.The request was granted.

The gag order revolves around Anat Kamm, 23, a journalist who was arrested last December and charged under Israel's espionage and treason for allegedly photocopying and leaking sensitive documents during her time in the IDF. The far-reaching gag order applies not only to the details of Kamm's arrest but to news of the arrest itself. Israeli media only have been able to refer to the incident as a "security-related affair."

The documents alleged to have been leaked by Kamm formed the basis for a 2008 Haaretz story implicating top military staff, including Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the military chief of staff, in defying Supreme Court rulings restricting targeted killings.

Though Israeli media was banned from reporting the story, foreign media and blogs not under Israeli jurisdiction have published details of the case. JTA reported the story on March 27. Reportedly, the Supreme Court sent messages to the State Prosecutor's Office and the presiding judge, Ze'ev Hammer, hinting that situation was untenable.

"If the entire world knows about it, issuing a gag order is baseless," said Press Council President Dalia Dorner, a former Supreme Court justice. "Gag orders impinge on the freedom of the press, and this is allowed if publication is highly likely to cause grave damage to state security. But if the whole world knows, this alone constitutes a reason to withdraw the injunction."

Gila Svirsky's account:

This story is a testament to the Internet. And to Anat Kam, the whistleblower, who is widely regarded in Israeli security circles as a traitor and will probably soon be charged with treason.

Anat (I'll use her first name, though I don't know her) is a 23-year old journalist who wrote for the popular Israeli portal Walla. Some months ago, Anat did the unthinkable: she passed on information that was decidedly newsworthy, but that the Shin Bet – Israel's security services – did not want outsiders to have. It was a"hit list" – the names of Palestinians living in the West Bank who were on the Shin Bet's "wanted" list. And it was a copy of the Shin Bet protocol stating that if these "wanted" figures are identified during the course of a military action, permission is granted to carry out "an interception". Nice language for execution without trial. Reports are that Anat photocopied this classified information while serving in the IDF.

Anat allegedly passed on this classified information to Uri Blau, a journalist, who published it months ago as a major scoop in Ha'aretz. Now Ha'aretz has whisked Uri away to London to protect him from the Israeli authorities, who would love to interrogate him about his informant. Meanwhile, Anat has been under house arrest and held incommunicado for at least three months.

This is a big story, but until today no Israeli newspapers could publish it because a judge issued a gag order at the Shin Bet's request. But go ask Henry Miller about banned books. Thanks to the ban and Israel's inability to control cyberspace, the story has taken on vastly greater proportions. Every news outlet in Israel – newspapers, radio, TV, news portals – has front-paged the story now that the gag order was lifted. It would never have received such widespread attention had the Israeli authorities not tried to hide it in the first place. And had the Internet not cloned the story through every webpage eager to expose state secrets.

This is not the first time the Israeli authorities have arrested suspects and held them incommunicado for extended periods. It happens to Palestinians all the time. The best known case of an Israeli is Mordechai Vanunu, who blew the whistle on Israel's nuclear warfare capabilities 24 years ago and was tried behind closed doors. More recently, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaakov, an Israeli citizen now living in the U.S., was arrested on a visit to Israel in 2002, and a gag order placed on news of his month-long detention and interrogation. Yaakov, a key scientist in the development of Israel's nuclear weapons program, was suspected of divulging some of Israel's secrets, but eventually released without charge.

So Israel has managed to draw widespread international attention to a story it wanted to hush up. But why conceal the fact that the Shin Bet has a "hit list" and gives license to its commando units to carry out field executions? After all, doesn't the U.S. do the same thing in its own so-called war against terror?

Israel, in my view, wanted to hide this information to avoid the legal and diplomatic ramifications of disclosures that its soldiers were once again breaking international law. Israel has been playing defense ever since the Gaza Campaign, trying to keep its senior politicians and officers out of European courts on charges of war crimes. Most recently (December 2009), opposition leader Zipi Livni cancelled a trip to London out of fear she would be arrested, thanks to universal jurisdiction of human rights violations. Similar arrest orders were deflected by other senior Israelis (Barak, Mofaz, and Almog). Publicity about a hit list and hit squads could only add fuel to the growing criticism of Israel and the fear among its leaders of being arrested on a visit to Europe. Not to mention the fact that Israel's own Supreme Court outlawed such unprovoked assassinations just months ago.

But really, isn't Israel still the "only democracy in the Middle East"? Concealing someone's arrest and the charges against her are clearly pages from the annals of dark regimes. And the broader context is the growing McCarthyite culture inside Israel – the silencing of its critics, the squirreling away of its whistleblowers. We see this in the hate campaign against Israeli human rights organizations, which has now reached a new peak – a bill before the Knesset that would severely hamper these organizations from receiving funds from foreign states, one of their only sources of support as the Israeli government is not about to fund human rights activity.

What's not to love about secrecy, lies, and human rights violations? Praise the whistleblowers and all those who turned on the Internet lights, making it impossible for the authorities to turn them off again.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

In an extensive, research-based 2009 position paper titled: On Nuclear Weapons: A Feminist Perspective, Ednay Gorney and Hedva Eyal of the Isha L'Isha Haifa Feminist Center wrote, "the Israeli public remains excluded from the [nuclear] debate. The public does not ask questions, does not demand that the state takes responsibility, nor does it demand to be involved in decision making; it accepts and is content with the information or, more accurately, with the lack of information."

This passive indifference to the nuclear weaponry widely believed to be in the public's backyard is, in my view, a highly dangerous manifestation of Israel's longtime and entrenched militarization. As Gorney and Eyal have put it, "Decision-making in all areas related to security is characterized by secrecy and vagueness, excluding anyone who does not belong to the security elite. … The secret functions both on the outside as well as on the inside. Denying information under the guise of maintaining secrecy is one of the common ways through which elites maintain their status. … [While o]ne of the ways they can attain legitimacy for their control and actions is to continuously disseminate and instill fear – real and imaginary – among the citizens of Israel. This fear justifies and, in turn, foments military power and its use against any security threat, as defined by this elite group."

Meanwhile, Gorney and Eyal have noted, "We are flooded with information on the great threat Iran poses and on the necessity of military operations. The debate within the Israeli public discourse is almost devoid of the possibility of solution through diplomatic means."

Outlining the severely undemocratic suppression of any public nuclear debate in Israel, the position paper lists a line of researchers, journalists, politicians, activists and ex-security personnel who's critical voices have been stifled by the security establishment, using a broad range of tactics. This in addition to the constant dissemination of fear underpinning militarization in general and the unquestioning Israeli public acceptance of its governments' nuclear armament in particular. Thus, the risks of such armament to this public itself, as well as the entire area or even the globe, go unexamined and undebated for decades on end.

Resisting this reality and reaching for an actual, participatory democracy, Gorney and Eyal explain, "As feminists we wish to expose the connections between the policy of opacity, concealment and fear, and the current perception of security. We want to take responsibility for our lives and for actions carried out in our name."

In one of the rare public voices taking up these issues, the position paper concludes:"We demand the removal of opacity surrounding the issue of nuclear weapons in Israel; We demand a public debate and the development of an alternative policy that will enable us to live in peace in the Middle East; We demand nuclear disarmament; We demand that the State of Israel join the International Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."

Another such public voice, sounded now for many years, is that of nuclear historian and analyst, Avner Cohen, whose work is one of main sources repeatedly referred to by the Isha L'Isha position paper. Cohen is equally critical of successive Israeli governments' successful barring of nuclear debate and, in the recent op-ed forwarded in full below, offers a series of serious arguments against what he views as the irresponsible and extremely dangerous possibility that Israel might launch a military attack against Iran in an attempt to quash its nuclear capacity.

Cohen's op-ed, converging in part with some of the conclusions presented by the Isha L'Isha position paper, was published April 2nd in Haaretz.

If Israel takes military action against Iran, it will be one of the biggest decisions in the history of the state. The risks involved will make it unprecedented.

There is no comparison between such a decision and the ones that established and implemented the so-called Begin doctrine: the decision by Menachem Begin's government to attack the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 and the attack on the nuclear facility in Syria in 2007. In terms of both the complexity of the military operation and the uncertainty about the consequences and where they may lead, there is a qualitative difference between the legacy of the past and the challenge of the present.

The seriousness of the challenge requires as open and thorough a public discussion as possible. But unfortunately, such a discussion has been virtually nonexistent, even on a basic conceptual level. Instead of a public discussion there has been a belligerent press, which makes demagogic use of statements that intensify the message of the politics of fear. These include expressions such as "Iran is galloping toward a bomb" and a "second Holocaust" that Israel must prevent. Such discourse creates a feeling that if Iran is not attacked, and soon, we have no choice but to accept a nuclear Iran.

It's doubtful whether the people making those statements are capable of giving them a precise (technical and political) interpretation. It's doubtful whether they have a suitable answer to the question: When should Iran be considered a nuclear state? Where exactly is the red line? What is the precise significance of such a line and what makes it red?

One thing is clear: As long as Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it will not be able to test a nuclear device or declare that it has one. Also, as long as Iran is subject to the treaty, it will not be a nuclear state according to the accepted definition of such a state.

It's true that under cover of the treaty Iran can get very close to the nuclear threshold and still claim - as it claims now - that it is not deviating from its legal obligations under the treaty. Iran as a threshold state can perhaps even position itself a few weeks away from a nuclear test. Such an Iran, despite supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency, will of necessity be opaque; there will always remain a fear that it is working in secret, including making weapons in secret. But even in such a case, Iran would be considered a threshold state, not an actual nuclear state.

Even those who disparage the practical limitations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (as Israelis tend to do) must recognize that it is almost impossible for Iran to be a nuclear state in the full sense without withdrawing from the treaty. And even if it is outside the treaty, it will take Iran years, many years, to make the transition from a threshold state to a mature nuclear state. Such a transition is not trivial; certainly it is not inevitable, even if we look at the experience of states that in the past were considered threshold states and were not bound by the treaty's restrictions.

For example, India, which carried out a nuclear test in 1998, is still making this transition slowly, and many experts say it should still not be considered a mature nuclear state. Even Pakistan, whose nuclear path was faster and more purposeful than India's, needed about a generation to become a nuclear state to all extents and purposes. In its nuclear behavior Iran is more like India than Pakistan.

It's ironic that an Iran under attack would probably become more determined and purposeful in its nuclear ambitions. After an attack, Iran would abandon the treaty in protest, declare its right to nuclear arms and almost certainly succeed in implementing it.

The public discussion in Israel about a nuclear Iran is simplistic, inadequate, confused and confusing. It reflects to some degree our own biases. We come from a culture of national security in which nuclear opacity has been exploited to the hilt to create a specific model of deterrence. The result is that when we look at Iran we see ourselves: how we would behave in a similar situation. But Iran is not Israel exactly, and the Israeli experience does not necessarily reflect Iran's behavior. On the contrary, it leads to systematic errors when making assessments.

The writer is the author of the book "Israel and the Bomb." His forthcoming book, "The Worst-Kept Secret," will be published in the United States in September.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Below you'll find Naomi Klein's letter in support of a bill, passed by the student senate in Berkeley by a vote of 16-4, and vetoed by the President.The bill will be reconsidered soon, and we have the opportunity to write to the Senators in support of overturning the veto.If you wish to write such a letter, you can do so at http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2747

Open Letter to Berkeley Students on their Historic Israeli Divestment BillBy Naomi Klein

March 31, 2010

On March 18, continuing a long tradition of pioneering human rights campaigns, the Senate of the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley (ASUC) passed "A Bill In Support of UC DIVESTMENT FROM WAR CRIMES." The historic bill resolves to divest ASUC's assets from two American companies, General Electric and United Technologies, that are "materially and militarily supporting the Israeli government's occupation of the Palestinian territories"--and to advocate that the UC, with about $135 million invested in companies that profit from Israel's illegal actions in the Occupied Territories, follow suit. Although the bill passed by a vote of 16-4 after a packed and intense debate, the President of the Senate vetoed the bill six days later. The Senate is expected to reconsider the bill soon; groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace are asking supporters of the bill to send letters to the Senators, who can overturn the veto with only fourteen votes.

Here is the letter I just sent:

Dear members of the ASUC Senate,I am writing to urge you to reaffirm Senate Bill 118A, despite the recent presidential veto.

It comes as no surprise that you are under intense pressure to reverse your historic and democratic decision to divest from two companies that profit from Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. When a school with a deserved reputation for academic excellence and moral leadership takes such a bold position, it threatens to inspire others to take their own stands.

Indeed, Berkeley--the campus and the wider community--has provided this kind of leadership on many key issues in the past: not only Apartheid in South Africa but also sweatshops in Indonesia, dictatorship in Burma, political killings in Nigeria, and the list goes on. Time and again, when the call for international solidarity has come from people denied a political voice, Berkeley has been among the first to answer. And in virtually every case, what began as a small action in a progressive community quickly spread across the country and around the world.

Your recent divestment bill opposing Israeli war crimes stands to have this same kind of global impact, helping to build a grassroots, non-violent movement to end Israel's violations of international law. And this is precisely what your opponents--by spreading deliberate lies about your actions--are desperately trying to prevent. They are even going so far as to claim that, in the future, there should be no divestment campaigns that target a specific country, a move that would rob activists of one of the most effective tools in the non-violent arsenal. Please don't give into this pressure; too much is on the line. As the world has just witnessed with the Netanyahu government's refusal to stop its illegal settlement expansion, political pressure is simply not enough to wrench Israel off its current disastrous path. And when our governments fail to apply sanctions for defiant illegality, other forms of pressure must come into play, including targeting those corporations that areprofiting directly from human rights abuses. Whenever we take a political action, we open ourselves up to accusations of hypocrisy and double standards, since the truth is that we can never do enough in the face of pervasive global injustice. Yet to argue that taking a clear stand against Israeli war crimes is somehow to "discriminate unfairly" against Israelis and Jews (as the veto seems to claim) is to grossly pervert the language of human rights. Far from "singling out Israel," with Senate Bill 118A, you are acting within Berkeley's commendable and inspiring tradition.

I understand that there is some debate about whether or not your divestment bill was adopted "in haste." Not having been there, I cannot comment on your process, though I am deeply impressed by the careful research that went into the decision. I also know that in 2005 an extraordinarily broad range of Palestinian civil society groups called on activists around the world to adopt precisely these kinds of peaceful pressure tactics. In the years since that call, we have all watched as Israeli abuses have escalated dramatically: the attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, a massive expansion of illegal settlements and walls, an ongoing siege on Gaza that violates all prohibitions on collective punishment, and, worst of all, the 2008/9 attack on Gaza that left approximately 1,400 dead.

I would humbly suggest that when it comes to acting to end Israeli war crimes, the international response has not suffered from too much haste but from far too little. This is a moment of great urgency, and the world is watching.